The Oklahoma City Thunder are absolutely rolling over the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals. Russell Westbrook has found another gear, Kevin Durant is finally feeling like himself again after a rather miserable Game 1 and guys like Steven Adams and Andre Roberson are playing the best ball of their careers. One name we haven’t heard a lot of, though, is Billy Donovan, the head coach of this surging team.
The Thunder have been here before, but they’ve never played like this before.
Before Scott Brooks’ final season in which the team didn’t even make the playoffs, Oklahoma City had been to three conference finals and an NBA Finals, never quite cresting that final ridge.
Now we’re seeing a team that is making the historically best team in the history of the NBA’s regular season look incompetent.
It’s easy to see the Warriors are struggling, but it’s about time to recognize, just as strongly, that those struggles have a lot to do with Donovan’s influence and schemes.
We’ve seen Adams guarding Curry at times, with success. Two blocked shots so far, and Curry can’t seem to shake the big man on the perimeter. We’ve seen Kevin Durant absolutely shut down Curry thus far in the series.
We’ve also seen the Thunder implement an imprisoning defensive strategy against Curry in a sort of defensive triangle.
The league MVP, who averaged 30.1 points on 46.2 percent shooting during the regular season, is averaging 24.3 points on 41.9 percent shooting in this series.
We’ve seen Durant shutting down Klay Thompson for long stretches at a time. We’ve seen Dion Waiters chip in to keep Thompson in check as well.
Billy Donovan has been seamlessly integrating his bench player into the mix for maximum benefit on both sides of the court. It’s hard to find many decisions he’s made that didn’t result in a positive for the Thunder, including his small lineup, which the Warriors have been helpless against.
The @okcthunder have outscored the Warriors 91-35 with their small lineup on the court over the last 2 games: pic.twitter.com/Wvxrf3uqyk
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) May 25, 2016
Defensively, OKC has Golden State’s number right now. In fact, besides the one dominant stretch by Stephen Curry in Game 2 (the only game the Warriors have won this series), the Warriors have been stymied in a major way offensively.
Yes, Curry is clearly still dealing with some discomfort in his injured knee. Yes, the Warriors are drained after a season of unrivaled excellence and the pressure that came with chasing 72. Yes Draymond Green is having one of the worst playoff series by anyone in recent memory.
But don’t think for a second all the things going wrong with Golden State happened by accident. Donovan has intentionally set the stage. He’s planted the seeds, watered the ground and is now seeing the fruits of his labor.
And it’s not just Xs and Os that have made the difference His own players have come to deeply respect him as a leader. Consider these words, spoken by Kevin Durant:
“Everybody is loving you when you win a game, but as soon as you lose a game, he doesn’t belong here,” Durant said, per Royce Young of ESPN.com. “So it’s up and down on the outside how people feel about him, but we know throughout the whole season he’s poised and definitely giving us that confidence that we can play well every single night. He’s been a great motivator for us.”
He took a team that had started to fade into one that appears to be the best in basketball right now. We all knew he was a great college coach, thanks to his back-to-back national championships at Florida. Now we know Billy Donovan is a great NBA coach — one of the best in the Association.